1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a pallet for the transfer of goods, specifically used with a hand truck, which provides a stabilized load platform for the transport of goods and which can also serve as a display case for stacked merchandise. The pallet body includes a lightweight, honeycomb, molded structure, a front bottom recessed opening, sized to receive the support blade on a hand truck and a rear pallet interlock protrusion which allows two pallets to be joined together.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The use of pallets for transport and loading systems is well known in the prior art. Typically, pallets are made of wooden boards joined together as a flat frame that are used to support one or more merchandise cartons and boxes. The frame boards are spaced apart and have a pair of slots for insertion of elongated lifting forks found on motorized or electric fork lift vehicles to lift and move an individual pallet. Manually operated hand carts may also use pallets.
The present invention relates to a hand cart or hand truck pallet that supports and stabilizes a load on a hand cart or truck and is also useful as a display case.
Pallets for transporting and displaying merchandise are known in the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 4,226,192, issued Oct. 7, 1980 to Meyers, shows a single-piece pallet that includes a plurality of legs that can be operated with a hand truck. Typically, the pallet is made of a unitary body that permits stacking of cases of merchandise without interference to view the writing on the merchandise displayed in the pallets. U.S. Pat. No. 4,368,675, issued Jan. 18, 1983 to Propst, shows a material handling pallet that has stackable shelves for stacking pallets. U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,981, issued Feb. 4, 1986 to Headon, shows a display packaging system that includes shelves for both displaying and transporting goods.
The present invention provides a compact, lightweight pallet suitable for use with a hand truck that can stabilize a load and also be used as a display platform. The pallet includes a special recessed bottom opening for mounting on the hand cart safely and quickly and has a rear flange for allowing adjacent pallets to be interlocked together. The interlock would be for multiple shelving arrays. The present invention can be easily fabricated from ABS plastic or an equivalent molded to a honeycomb infrastructure.